ONLINE SAFETY ACT 2023 COMING TO A COMPUTER NEAR YOU ON 25TH JULY 2025

There has already been a lot of talk within the gun trade about the Online Safety Act 2023, but I thought it was worth attempting to give a short summary of the issues and potential problems as it will come into force this month.

IMAGE: ISTOCK - M.PHOTOSTOCK

I will try and keep this simple, which is not easy. There are 241 sections and 17 Schedules to this Act [‘the OSA’]. It places a ‘duty of care’ on anyone who has a website, or, importantly for the trade, a search engine. Anyone who operates a website or search engine has to take steps to conduct an ‘illegal content risk assessment’. The providers are referred to as ‘services’. A lot of the Act is an attempt to prevent harm to children, terrorism or illegal pornography. However, what will be of serious concern to the trade is Annex 10 to the OFCOM Guidance which deals with ‘weapons’. The entire documents for those who wish to study the detail, or have trouble sleeping, can be found here: https://www. ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-andharmful-content/protecting-people-fromillegal-content-online.

OFCOM published this in November 2023 stating how they expected the Act to operate. Annex 10 covers “A8.1 This section considers the following types of weapons, some of which we have grouped together where appropriate: a) Firearms, their parts, ammunition, including air weapons and shotguns; b) 3D printing instructions for guns and gun parts; c) Knives; d) ‘Offensive’ weapons, including axes and crossbows, knuckledusters, corrosive substances, blowpipes and truncheons; and e) Imitation firearms.

As can be seen, this includes the whole of the gun trade, and all allied ranges of products, and many items which are not inherently illegal. Unfortunately, the Guidance continues:

A8.8 In what follows we have structured the reasoning with a view to securing that services can consider the easiest questions first. If the weapon in the content looks as if it may be, or be a component part of, some sort of gun or projectile weapon powered by something other than a drawstring or a person’s breath, or it looks like the ammunition used by such a weapon, services should work their way through the questions in this section.

A8.9 Component parts includes: a) any barrel, chamber or cylinder; b) any frame, body or receiver; c) any breech, block or bolt (or any other mechanism for containing the charge at the rear of the chamber); or d) any action, any part of a firearm which directly bears the pressure caused by firing and any magazine.

THE GUIDANCE FURTHER CONTINUES: A8.12 Deal with whether an item is being ‘exposed for sale’. If it is not it can be ignored … but if it is ..? No matter where the website is based, if it is exposing for sale to UK customers, it is potentially unlawful. The OSA Guidance is based on the content being ‘illegal’ based on criminal offences in the UK. The problem here is that a firearms transaction can be both legal and illegal. Within the OSA ‘Weapons’ are classified as ‘priority illegal content’. The Guidance goes on to suggest ‘services’ should consider whether the item is an antique or a prohibited weapon. That will likely be outside their level of knowledge, or that of the average individual employed as a content moderator by search engines and other service providers to make these judgements.

The Deactivated Weapons Association and the GTA and others have held a number of meetings with OFCOM to point out that this will restrict access to lawful trade in firearms. OFCOM say they are only interested in illegal sales/activity. That may be so, but this could be a huge problem.

If an SGC holder were to search ‘Beretta Silver pigeon’ the search would probably be blocked by all the major search engines as this could be an illegal sale. The words underlined above ‘may be’ and ‘potentially’ are the problem.

There are two categories of trade which will be affected by this. The normal RFD with a website, and the platforms which sell firearms related items on behalf of the public. With the RFDs it will be hoped that there will be some mechanism for ‘marking their websites safe’ on the basis they clearly engage in lawful trade and will only sell to licensed purchasers. It may be more difficult for the online market platforms, although the well known ones in the UK already use (as do most RFDs) online payment systems which identify buyers and sellers.

The real problem is going to be the search engines. Risk a swingeing fine, or just block it all, and why pay for staff to check it is legitimate?

We do not yet know how this new framework will operate in practice, or the extent to which it will impact the gun trade. Those members who have an active website may wish to establish how many ‘hits’ their site had up to July 2025, and how many hits there are in the following 3 months. The GTA welcome raw data with which to fight the battle. Please let them know.